Galeria Angelo Falzone
Mannheim, Germany, 1997
Wall painting, objects and performance
Foto: Claus Stolz and Andreas Winkler

The most impressive of this series of ephemeral paintings, took place in a gallery space of almost 1000 m2. For this painting and performance, von Berner relied on the generous help of five volunteers.

For the performance the helpers were painted in the same way like the ephemeral mural, to somewhat visually become a fragment of the great elephant, just like in the well-known Hindu fable, in which six blind men, explain from their fragmented and partial viewpoint, how an elephant is. But none of them achieves to give a vision of the elephants totality.

In our society elephants appear in form of toys, logos, cartoons and also documentaries, all of which are partial visions, which makes it impossible to perceive what the presence of a real elephant in his natural habitat can really transmit, moreover we can not really understand the significance of the extinction of this animal and its natural habitat.